


The Gift of Foresight

by RBMGay



Category: Chernobyl (TV 2019)
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Crying, Cuddling & Snuggling, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mention of blood, Nightmares, No Beta, Pre-Chernobyl, Premonitions, Talking, extremely non-graphic sex, major character death but it’s in a dream, only gamma and alpha, very brief period-typical sexism, wild canon divergence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:48:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23301910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RBMGay/pseuds/RBMGay
Summary: Valery has a bad, weird dream, Boris tries to comfort him, and they talk. Then they take a bath together, fuck, and talk some more. A weird fix-it that is open to interpretation.
Relationships: Valery Legasov/Boris Shcherbina
Comments: 9
Kudos: 35





	The Gift of Foresight

Boris awoke sleepily from a dream he could not quite remember, and turned to the man next to him, expecting to find him still asleep. Valery was more of a night owl than Boris, something that seemed to be an unshakable trait of men like him, and it surprised Boris to find him awake already at this hour. It wasn’t an unpleasant surprise, however. Morning sex was one of the greatest joys of living with one’s lover, and he was excited to be able to indulge himself immediately.

“Good morning, Valera,” he whispered, getting only a murmur in response. Undeterred by this lack of enthusiasm, Boris continued, kissing the nape of Valery’s neck. He moved his hand under the beloved hideous blanket, resting his hand on the other man’s fleshy hip, and began moving it slowly towards his cock, confident he would still have his morning wood.

But Valery slapped his hand away.

“Not in the mood?” Boris asked, his own mood having become slightly soured by the shattering of this fantasy.

Valery said nothing. An unpleasant thought then occurred to Boris.

“You didn’t have another one of those dreams, did you?”

Boris understood little about these bizarre dreams. Not where they were coming from, nor the contents of them. He only knew they upset the man he loved. They distressed him so badly sometimes that he could not function at all. Other times they would merely linger in his consciousness, poisoning his temperament and distracting him at inopportune times. And they were becoming more frequent.

“Yes...”

Boris sat up, taking a glass of water from the bedside table, as Valery stole the whole blanket and wrapped it around himself. “Ignalinsk again or what?”

“No, Chernobyl this time.”

“Chernobyl?” Boris thought. This was a new one, though he had mentioned the plant in passing. “Was it one of the new reactors?”

“I think it was reactor one... no, two...”

Boris _almost_ understood how a nuclear reactor worked at this point. He didn’t particularly care to know, but explaining it seemed to make Valery feel better, for whatever reason.

“Three...” Valery continued. “Four... five... I don’t know. One, two, three, four, five.” He repeated it, turning it into a nonsensical mantra. “One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five.”

“That doesn’t really narrow it down.”

“No.” Valery shook his head, and rubbed his eyes. He reached for his glasses on the opposing night table, but hesitated to put them on, merely holding them. He was crying, silently.

Boris didn’t know how to cope with tears. He knew plenty about concrete, a little about nuclear reactors now too, but nothing about tears. He had slapped men for crying in his presence, and berated them, things he did not feel were appropriate here. In women, he expected tears, and more or less ignored them — women could deal with women’s problems as men did with men’s. The few times he had witnessed this disturbing fluid leaking from his own eyes — thankfully as he was alone — he was able to do nothing but dab ineffectually at them with his sleeve. Valery was ahead of him there, drying his eyes with the corner of the blanket.

“Would you like something?” Boris had decided to offer material comfort. He was all about materials — concrete, steel, sand — and that was something he could generalize, or attempt to. “I can get you tea, or if you’d rather something stronger we’ve got plenty. Maybe you’d like some food?” Comfort and food went together. They were almost inseparable for some. Boris was not a great cook, but he tried. Valery was better. It was just chemistry, he said. Not his kind of chemistry, but close enough that he was more likely to cobble together something edible than a man who knew only of steel, sand, and concrete.

Valery shook his head. Boris had to do something, anything, so he poured another glass of water and handed it to Valery, who finally put down his glasses in the middle of the bed, taking the water instead.

“Can you get Sasha for me?” Valery asked, sounding a little better now.

Boris sighed quietly, trying to make his exasperation inaudible. That cat was hard to find. He always hid from Boris, anyway, and at this time he’d possibly still be out. But if Valery wanted Sasha, Boris would find Sasha. He dressed hastily and reluctantly. The cat, he simply found in the kitchen, feasting on leftover food.

“Lucky,” he said, to himself more than Sasha, and picked him up gently, cooing to him, all in an attempt to avoid being scratched. Sasha had an appetite like his owner, and it showed. That creature was getting heavy. At least he didn’t scratch Boris, not this time. He returned to the bedroom and placed Sasha on the bed. The cat crawled towards Valery, curling up on his chest, the blanket between them. Valery stroked the cat’s head.

“Are you alright now?”

“Fine, Borya.” But there was something in the way he said it, and the resigned, sad-eyed smile, that made Boris think he was not fine. Boris had a suspicion that there may, in fact, have been something the other man was not telling him. Still he nodded, smiling back, relieved that the tears had stopped, and that he would not have to talk any more about whatever the hell this was, at least for this morning. So he hoped.

He noticed Valery had not touched his cigarettes yet, and that his glasses were still sitting on the bed. The man was still wrapped in his blanket, almost cocoon-like. He continued to stroke the cat. Sasha purred. Valery should have been purring in Boris’ arms by now, or moaning under him, but there was only the sound of his breathing, anxious breathing perhaps.

“Shall we have breakfast now? Or would you like me to draw us a bath?”

Sasha seemed displeased at the very mention of a bath, as if he not only understood the word but would be forced into what it represented. Valery was more open to the idea. “A bath would be good.”

Once they were in the bath together, Valery relaxed noticeably. He always enjoyed baths, more so baths together. He loved having warm water poured over him, his chubby body soaped, and his hair washed gently. As Boris did this today, Valery showed his appreciation by planting little kisses on his lover’s chest — affectionate at first, then becoming more sensual. The fantasy of morning sex had not disappeared from Boris’ brain, only crept behind a wall, and now it emerged.

“Shall we have breakfast after this, Valera?” Boris asked. “Or would you like to go back to bed?”

“Bed,” Valery said. Perhaps there was a little discomfort still lingering in his voice, but Boris chose to ignore it. Valery seemed happier than he’d been for a long time. He felt somehow even softer than usual in Boris’ arms, and supple.

If he’d been twenty years younger, or if Valery had been twenty kilos lighter, he would have carried him to their bed, but his ailing back could barely cope with sex itself, let alone the added strain of such unnecessary preludes. Anyway, it was a little odd for a man to carry another man like that, Boris thought — although he still didn’t fully understand the rules of this game. Whatever the case, he was only too happy to take Valery’s hand and lead him to the bedroom, as he had done the first time.

Not that it was like the first time at all. Valery was so relaxed that Boris could slide right into him without any fuss. Just some lubricant and that was it. It was a far cry from how tense he had been less than an hour ago. He seemed to let go, completely, of whatever bad thoughts he was having. When he looked into Boris’ eyes, there wasn’t even a trace of that haunted look.

Only in the aftermath did it return. Hours later, when they’d cuddled, and eaten a lazy breakfast, and gone back to bed to cuddle again, Valery became tense. Then more tense. He said nothing, but Boris could feel the tightness in his muscles, and his heart racing. He stopped looking at Boris, avoiding his gaze.

“You are thinking of something, Valera.”

“Yes...”

“I’m sure it’s your dream again. Am I right?”

Valery did not say anything at all, but Boris was patient, waiting for him to reply. He stroked the other man’s hair gently, wondering if he would flinch. He did not. He did begin to cry again, a few more silent tears, but this time Boris reacted with instincts he didn’t know he had, simply brushing the tears away with his thumb, and kissing the top of Valery’s head.

“I know you, Valera. It takes more than a bad dream to make you cry, and you normally tell me everything, so what is this?”

At last, Valery stopped avoiding Boris’ gaze. His eyes were more haunted than ever, and though he was trying to speak now, words did not escape his lips. They trembled.

“Valera, whatever it is, you can tell me. Anything. Anything in the world.”

“You were there, Borya.” He had finally managed to speak. “You were there, in Chernobyl, with me. You were dying. Faster than me. You were so sick that you didn’t look like yourself. You ate something... I think it was a worm... no, that’s not right.”

Boris wasn’t sure what to make of this. He could only let him continue. “I’m sure you can remember if you try.”

Valery squinted. He furrowed his brow. He cleared his throat, and took a drink of water. “Ah... I think it was a caterpillar.”

“So I ate a caterpillar? Then what?”

He remembered by then. “You coughed. A lot. Until you coughed up a butterfly, but it was made of blood. And it flew away, far away, towards the reactor. Whichever one it was. The one that had exploded, like they always do. The butterfly disappeared. Then you did. You just vanished, but I knew you were dead. I felt it.”

“I’m sorry, Valera, but this is now well outside my area of expertise. There is nothing I can say to this.”

“Yes there is.” Valery squeezed Boris tightly, with a sudden strength that had absolutely nothing soft in it. “Promise me you’ll never go to the Chernobyl plant. To Pripyat. To Kiev, even.”

“I can’t avoid Kiev. But, if it really makes you feel better, I can promise you I’ll never go to Chernobyl. Why even would I?”

“For the same reason I would.” The dreams varied. Sometimes there were helicopters. Items from the space program made confusing appearances. Mushrooms, birds, fish, dogs, cats, cows, old women, pregnant women, children, babies, tanks, construction equipment, men with guns, men with cameras, doctors, nurses, chunks of graphite, huge amounts of sand. The one constant was that in every dream, Valery was there, he was trying to clean up the mess, and he was dying in the process. Boris had not been there. Not until now.

“They wouldn’t send me.” He scratched at his chin, where stubble had formed and not been shaved away during the lazy morning. “They wouldn’t send me, would they?”

“You said something to me before you died. I remember it now, Borya. You said that you were an inconsequential man.”

Boris Yevdokimovich Shcherbina was not an inconsequential man. He never had been. He never would be. His whole life he had spent rising, like the sun. But the sun, he realized, always set too. Would he? Could the Party he spent his life serving betray him? Was he as disposable as anyone else?

Something occurred to him. “You realize, if I’m an inconsequential man, and they send me to Chernobyl, then I’m going to Chernobyl, whether I like it or not?”

Valery sighed. “No, I had not.”

Boris decided to change the subject slightly. “Have you made any more headway on the accident itself?”

“Not much, no. It’s hard to piece things together. Besides which, I barely understand more than you at this point. About the reactors, that is. There is so much that has been kept secret, Borya, so so much.”

“Are you still meeting with this Belarusian of yours?” The Khomyuk woman, apparently, knew a great deal about the reactors. Her life’s work, Valery had said. Her knowledge, compared to his, was like his knowledge compared to Boris’.

“Yes. It will be next Wednesday, if nothing changes.”

“I can still help as promised. Whatever you need. I may be an inconsequential man, but I’ve kept us safe from prying eyes so far. I can do the same for you and her.” Different activities, but if they were caught, the penalty would be the same.

Valery smiled then. _That_ smile, the one that had made Boris fall head-over-heels in love with him what now seemed like a lifetime ago. He laughed, too. “Yes, Borya. Yes, you have.”

“Then perhaps I’m not so inconsequential after all?”

“I think, perhaps, you’re not,” Valery said, and kissed him.

A few minutes later, his glasses were on, and a cigarette in his mouth. Boris made tea, and Sasha, reappeared from wherever, weaved around their ankles and made noise until Valery replenished his food stocks. They started their work, as no day was truly restful for men like these two, and they worked into the night, after the sun set in the west.

The next morning, it rose in the east, and two consequential men woke well-rested. This time, there were no more bad dreams to contend with, only cautious optimism, careful planning, and a hand that was not slapped away, but brought closer.


End file.
